What are you needing?
Does it come from someone else, necessarily? When your need is unmet or when your need is met, how are you feeling? Can you trust your feelings and intuition to tell you when you are satisfied or discontented?
What are you feeling about your need being met or unmet? If you need something from someone else, be sure to make a concrete request and keep your communication clear and direct. Reflect and ask what their needs are, too. Ask the person if you got it right. Show them you care and that their thought is important to you. Reflect to them what you think they mean. How do you feel for them? Do you feel the empathy for them now?
Acknowledge the feelings you have and the feelings they are having. Ask if you got it right. Say something like, “I can see that you are feeling_____”; “It sounds like_______”; “Let me see if I’m getting this right_______.”
Discuss together how you are going to go about meeting those needs.
EXAMPLE OF EMPATHIC REFLECTION:
“It sounds like there have been many times that I’ve hurt you and you want to even the score and get back at me. You must be awfully furious with me. It sounds like you are also afraid. You may have the need to be seen and to matter, that you haven’t been able to connect with me to convey your feelings because you need connection and empathy. You sound angry because I’m hurting you and you have not gotten the acknowledgement and apology from me that would re-establish a harmonious connection.”
How to Make an Empathic Reflection
When we paraphrase by paying attention to particular words which seem to capture the essence of what you and the other are expressing, we can then check for accuracy. Instead of parroting the entire story, we can focus micro-shifts that are being made while matching the tone and energy. Here are three examples of reflections that connect the listener with the speaker:
Speaker: I am not influencing the group the way I had hoped.
Listener (recap): You’re saying you had hoped to influence the group differently.
Listener (empathic reflection): Are you sad, longing to connect more deeply with the group?
Listener (reframing): It sounds like you can envision a better way to have the influence you want?
Empathy is feeling the other deeply, as one in the same, and feeling the desire to alleviate the suffering of the other. Empathy is an action connected to the compassionate choice that ethics holds us responsible for. It is what is most real.
Mostly, words promise to bring more hope back into your life and the world. Speech that carries a message of unity and fairness to all is remembered. These basic touch points are based in empathy. In other words, they address the universal needs of humanity. Now, following through is much more complex.
Empathy is Poetry 